The Traveler

May 30, 2005
This production opens with an unintentionally hilarious interview with the author, who "lives off the Grid," according to his bio, and protectively distorts his voice for a discussion of his book's relevance to the contemporary matrix of governmental and corporate interference in daily life. The author's grandiose paranoia is overblown, but Carradine does a solid job of keeping a straight face with his reading. Carradine's gravelly, folksy voice conveys the twists and turns of Hawks' action-adventure narrative, lending a weary dignity to his tale of Maya, a twentysomething scion of a group of mercenaries whose sworn duty it is to protect the Travelers, a secret group of great men. Maya yearns to break free of her obligations, but she is forced to help Gabriel and Michael, two brothers who discover that they are Travelers. Carradine may not be able to save Hawks' book entirely from its aura of pompousness, but he makes a fine effort nonetheless.

February 1, 2005
Fantasy or fable? London designer Maya, a Harlequin-sworn to defend the Travelers, prophets who seek enlightenment-learns that American Travelers Gabriel and Michael Corrigan are in danger from the Tabulas, who want to stomp out Travelers and control the world. Like the Corrigans, the mysterious Twelve Hawks claims to live "off the grid." A BOMC main selection.

Copyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2005
Two brothers in Los Angeles may be among the last surviving members of a once-powerful secret society known as the Travelers. But their lives are in jeopardy: they have been targeted for assassination by members of another secret society, the Tabula, who are dedicated to the complete eradication of the Travelers and to total control of the world. All that stands in their way is a young woman, part of a small band of warriors who call themselves Harlequins. Their mission: to protect the Travelers at all costs. If this all sounds a little wacky, don't panic: the author, a gifted storyteller, makes this surreal and vaguely supernatural good-versus-evil story entirely believable. Although he has a lot of explaining to do (he has to tell us about three distinct groups of superbeings, to start with), he manages it without clogging his narrative with whopping great chunks of exposition. He writes about Travelers and Tabula and Harlequins as if we already know what they are; he thrusts us into this world as though we already know it and lets us pick it up as we go along. The pace is fast, the characters intriguing and memorable, the evil dark and palpable, and the genre-bending between fantasy and thriller seamless. There are dozens of ways Twelve Hawks could have tripped up, and he avoids every one of them. Assuming this isn't a one-shot, he could be a force to reckon with.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)